An interesting TED talk from David Brooks:

http://youtu.be/rGfhahVBIQw

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/104253/joseph-smith-part-1



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/2011 03:48PM by steve benson.

Matt stands back in amazement.

What a silly ill-informed comment in reply to Stray Mutt.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/2011 06:22PM by matt.

Another good one!

That was really interesting. Thanks for sharing!

prolly, but NOT by very much in the Moridor!

I don't see how 'Utah Mormons' make it, regardless of where they live.... To me, it's not 'living' at all.

just sayin'

http://www.threadneedler.com/2011/11/debunking-david-brooks-on-fracking/

David Brooks is not the best source for discussing if reason is overrated or not. He's a good speaker, and is relatively eloquent, but he is not consistent when it comes to reasoning about big issues.

Another author picks an argument with David Brooks.

http://www.phillymag.com/articles/booboos_in_paradise/

Excerpt:

There's just one problem: Many of his generalizations are false. According to Amazon.com sales data, one of Goodwin's strongest markets has been deep-Red McAllen, Texas. That's probably not, however, QVC country. "I would guess our audience would skew toward Blue areas of the country," says Doug Rose, the network's vice president of merchandising and brand development. "Generally our audience is female suburban baby boomers, and our business skews towards affluent areas." Rose's standard PowerPoint presentation of the QVC brand includes a map of one zip code -- Beverly Hills, 90210 -- covered in little red dots that each represent one QVC customer address, to debunk "the myth that they're all little old ladies in trailer parks eating bonbons all day."

"Everything that people in my neighborhood do without motors, the people in Red America do with motors," Brooks wrote. "When it comes to yard work, they have rider mowers; we have illegal aliens." Actually, six of the top 10 states in terms of illegal-alien population are Red.

"We in the coastal metro Blue areas read more books," Brooks asserted. A 2003 University of Wisconsin-Whitewater study of America's most literate cities doesn't necessarily agree. Among the study's criteria was the presence of bookstores and libraries; 20 of the 30 most literate cities were in Red states.

"Very few of us," Brooks wrote of his fellow Blue Americans, "could name even five NASCAR drivers, although stock-car races are the best-attended sporting events in the country." He might want to take his name-recognition test to the streets of the 2002 NASCAR Winston Cup Series's highest-rated television markets -- three of the top five were in Blue states. (Philadelphia was fifth nationally.)

Brooks could be dismissed as little more than a snarky punch-line artist, except that he postures as a public intellectual -- and has been received as one.

I thought he raised some interesting points in the video, but his attempts at humor were hit and miss and became rather irritating to me.

While he's a more thoughtful conservative than most, he has turned out to be something of a disappointment.

One of my main objections to David Brooks is that he creates a straw man when he separates reason and sentiment.

I do not think they are separate. I think they are intertwined, and that we use both when we make decisions.

He also makes the mistake, after separating reason from emotion, of describing reason as "cold".

Nonsense.

But then again, it's their brain telling them that, so what do YOU think the results will be???

No, and I don't think David Brooks is arguing that. Most everything he discusses in his talk is based on scientific studies of human nature in the areas of neuroscience, congnitive science, behavior economics, etc. Ie. it's based on the use of reason. What I think he's saying is that human nature does not operate in a purely rationalistic manner, that indeed as he says "emotions are at the center of our thinking". That's why the scientific method (which is based in reason and logic) is so important, since it allows us to look at the world in a manner that allows us to separate our individual biases and emotions from the larger reality that science exposes.

...so that we might get better insight into how the people we hope to convince might be thinking. And maybe there's something we can learn about ourselves.